Last Sunday night, I went over to Terminal Five on the West Side to see Girl Talk.

I’ve been a fan of Gregg Gillis’ work since I saw him DJ/mix at the Coachella festival a few years back. He made me dance. A lot. And I don’t really dance in public.

Sunday’s show was no different. Girl Talk shows are essentially huge dance parties. People go to have a good time and Gregg makes sure that they do. It’s almost cooler to watch the crowd than to watch the stage.

Here’s a little (grainy) video I took to give you an idea. Gregg is the shirtless guy in the center dancing as he works the laptop:

A few months back, Gregg came into the office to talk about his new album, Feed the Animals. He told me a little bit about how he collects samples for his mashups and more. Here’s a snippet of our interview:

Leigh: How do you choose the songs you sample?

Gregg: A lot of the time I base it on current hip-hop and pop, focusing on the delivery or inflection, not necessarily the content. I like to have the music line up rhythmically with the vocals if possible, so I sample a lot more Southern rap, because it kind of flows that way, where there’s very distinct points where you can match up a loop to it or something. It’s also just whatever I like. I’ll hear a song and think, man that’s the sickest guitar solo I’ve ever heard, I’m gonna sample that. Or wow, that’s a really crazy breakdown with just drums and hand-claps, I like that. So it’s just isolated parts and anything I can work with. A lot of times I’m wrong-- most of the time I’m wrong! I sample tons stuff that never sees that light of day, it’s like, this is going to sound great, and then I try it and it just doesn’t fit with anything. So it’s kind of like a guessing game for me.

Leigh: Tell me about your live performances...

Gregg: With the live show there’s a whole bunch of different loops, there’s beats and hand claps and things and different tempos, so whenever I get a sample I like and I want to work it in, I will put it into a template on my laptop. Then it’s a matter of finding out what’s going on around it, what would fit correctly with that. So a lot of the times when I’m playing it will be like, just cue-ing up different loops and samples. I’m just layering and it’s constantly changing and I’ll forget that a certain element is even playing. I think a big effort for me is to make it sound continuous, and to do that you take elements that are going to keep going so it’s flowing without you realizing it.